


The Children's Crusade

by AngelicSentinel



Series: The Darkest Timeline [2]
Category: Magic Kaito, 名探偵コナン | Detective Conan | Case Closed
Genre: Betrayal, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Secret Identity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-07-13
Packaged: 2018-12-01 20:59:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11494635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngelicSentinel/pseuds/AngelicSentinel
Summary: What do you do when the foundation upon which you've built your life is a lie?Don't ask Kuroba Kaito. He certainly doesn't know.





	The Children's Crusade

The full moon is high in the sky, the edges a burnished red, and it casts the night in an eerie glow. The moon and the stars are the only lights out tonight. The rest of Tokyo is bathed in darkness, save for emergency facilities. A near total blackout. The tap tap of footsteps sounds across the roof is the only noise in preternatural silence.

Heist target safely tucked against his chest, a dark figure stops the man in the white suit cold. In front of him is a man in black. He’s wearing a white mask with narrowed eyes and an evil grin. He moves to the side; the man moves with him, almost as if he is reading his mind.

A stand-off.

He reaches for his card gun. Before he can pull it out, however, the man in black pulls the mask off, hooking it on his waist. “Hello,” he says.

A familiar face. “No. I’m not stupid.” He laughs, an expression of nerves. “I won’t fall for this twice.”

A familiar voice. “Check it, if you’d like.”

The man the white suit staggers forward, stunned. “I don’t believe this. This is a disguise, or else some kind of trick.” He leans over, pinches the face of the man in black, who makes no effort to bat his hand away. There is no falsity of latex; his skin shifts only slightly, attached to muscle and bone. The figure in black does not move. The face is as real as the man in white’s rapidly beating heart.

The tilt of a black hat. “It is no trick.”

“I don’t believe this!” the figure in white repeats, shaking his head violently. “You’re dead. I saw you die!”

“Did you?” the figure in black says mildly, taking a step forward. “You of all people should know better than that.” He takes another step forward.

The figure in white takes a step back.

The man in black twists his lip. “Shouldn’t you, Kaito?”

Kaito dares a trembling smile. “You left. But you just—you—you—it was because they were after you, right?”

“A small ring of jewel thieves? I think not.” His speech is even, measured, deliberate, followed by a deep laugh that does not match his face. Never has Kaito detested the poker face more. “No, I had other obligations.”

Kaito’s face falls, and he is filled with a rising crest of anger. “Obligations more important than your family?” Kaito asks, and much to his chagrin, his voice is a near plea. _Than me?_ goes unsaid.

“More important than anything else on this earth.”

“Old man, if it really is you, then I don’t understand,” Kaito says slowly, his voice faltering.

“Don’t you?” His eyes move from Kaito to the red full moon. A blood moon; a sign of a full lunar eclipse, the moon and earth and sun in syzygy. “You should understand better than anyone else. Or were my lessons in vain? I did leave behind a fair number of them.”

“Lessons? You think this is about lessons?” Kaito raises his voice. “I thought you were dead! If not because they were after you,” he clenches his fists together, knuckles turning white, “then why!?”

“'Mirrors,‘” he quotes as if Kaito hasn’t raised his voice at all. “'The heart of the magician’s trade. You look at a mirror and you think you see truth reflected, when in reality, if you set a mirror a certain way, it conceals more than it reveals.’ That is how we disappear into thin air, pull doves and handkerchiefs from an empty box. You know this.”

“Why?” Kaito repeats, and he hates how broken, how plaintive his voice sounds.

“We are mirror and reflection, Kaito.” He takes another step. “We conceal part of ourselves, only to reveal other hidden, deeper truths.”

“If it wasn’t them, then what was it?” Kaito asks, almost desperately. “Where have you been all these years?”

“I believe you’ve met my other student recently.” The figure in black is quiet for a moment, considering. “Students. It was a hell of a train ride, wasn’t it?”

It takes Kaito a moment to parse through his words. “You’re one of _them_ , aren’t you?!” The man in black inclines his head. “Innocent people could have been killed!”

“It wouldn’t have been the way I’d gone about it, no. My children still have a lot to learn.” He takes another step forward. So blasé. So dismissive about the cost of human life.

Kaito can’t stand it. “I could have been killed!”

“You involved yourself where you shouldn’t have. It would have been a loss, but one that I could recoup later.” So dismissive about Kaito’s life.

“You call those kind of people your children?” Kaito can’t hide his disgust.

His poker face breaks; his smile is fond. Kaito remembers that smile. Even here, it’s benign, which is more frightening than if it had been twisted. “My cute, murderous little crows. There is a reason we carry the name of ‘black feather,’ Kaito. 'Kuroba.' Haven’t you ever wondered?”

“Does Mum know?”

“Oh, she’s got her own burdens to bear. When I saw a pretty little thief in distress, well. I’m sure you know the feeling, what with little Miss Nakamori. I couldn’t leave her to fend for herself. She was a nice distraction, for a while.”

Some way to refer to his wife. “You didn’t answer my question. Does she know?” he grinds out through gritted teeth.

“That I am alive? Yes. That my student followed me into the nest on the mountain rather than the other way around? No.” In a puff of smoke, he has a gun trained on Kaito. “And you are not to tell her. I do not care if you are my son.”

“I am no son of yours,” Kaito says.

“No,” the man agrees, which stings Kaito more than he would like to admit. “A legacy, I think is a much more apt description.”

Kaito smirks. “I’m not that either,” he says. He’s already started casing the rooftop, looking for the best way out. His father has noticed that he’s looking, and he’s grinning an indulgent grin, so much like Kaito’s own it makes him sick. “Your legacy.”

“You took up my mantle, indulged in my wild goose chase.” A flourish, and a clear white diamond replaces the pistol. He turns it, looking at from several different angles. He doesn’t hold it up to the moon.

“Wild goose chase?” Kaito says. “You mean that’s not real, either?”

“Why should I give you all the answers here?” He wiggles his index finger, makes a tsk tsk noise. “Answers have to be earned, little dove.”

“Then why reveal yourself at all?”

“You’ve read the novel _And Then There Were None_ , haven’t you?”

Kaito hates to admit it, but between Hakuba and Aoko… “Yes.”

“You remember the trick?”

“It was the Judge. He faked his death, and then killed himself at the end.” Kaito catches a shadow out of the corner of his eye and doesn’t acknowledge it at all.

“Yes, but do you remember how and why the Inspector figured it out?”

“The Judge set a bottle into the ocean which the Inspector found an unknown amount of time later. Because he wanted what he had done to be known.”

And here, the man in black smiles again, tossing the diamond up in the air.  “It is the performer in me who just can’t let it go, I suppose. After all, there’s no sense in performing without an audience, even if it’s just an audience of one.”

“I’ll stop you,” Kaito says, braver than he feels. His father taught him everything he knows; he is good at what he does, but is he good enough? The Crow heist reinforced that; it had taken him far far too long to understand the trick.

“You will try. I am looking forward to it.”

“Why?” Kaito repeats.

“Why not?”

“There has to be a reason.”

“You should understand. You’ve become part of something great, something far bigger than yourself. I did it for you, Kaito. From the moment of your birth, you’ve been groomed for this. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for you.”

“Then ‘Alas that I was ever born,’” Kaito quotes, one hand in his pocket, eyes hard. He shifts to the right, quiet, innocuous.

“Giving up?”

“As if I’d accept my fate so easily.” Kaito laughs. “I don’t know who you are. You may have his face, but you’re not my father.” Not the one he remembered, at any rate. “I will stop you.” He takes another small step.

“You and what army? Certainly not the Defense Force or the United States Military. Don’t worry about any of their other allies, either. Not the police either. Sheep, and easily led. Over fifty years, and our research has finally come to the end. ”

Kaito takes a final step to the right as a soccer ball comes barreling past his head. It doesn’t hit his so-called father, but it distracts him enough to give him time to throw a flash grenade right as the detective follows up with his anaesthetic dart watch. It grazes the man in black, and he wobbles but he doesn’t go down.

“Teenage detectives!” Kaito calls out, cheeky as the man in black shouts a command. He grabs Edogawa’s arm, runs to the edge of the building with sniper bullets nipping at their heels. He dives off the building to Edogawa’s yelp, clipping the attachment onto his belt as he goes. His hang glider barely supports weight for two adult people, but Kaito had learned after the teleportation heist, and made sure to carry that one around just in case. It should support a child’s weight just fine.

“Who is that?” Edogawa asks. “And why are they dressed as the Night Baron?”

“Not important right now! Where’s Hakuba? Inspector Nakamori? Are they safe?”

“Why do you care?”

“Because things have gone a little bit past cops and robbers, and as I recall you owe me a favor!”

“I do not!”

“You do, and I’m calling it in. I nearly got blown up because of you! Twice!”

“Fine! They’re both heading to the station! Your decoy worked. So help me if this is some kind of trick—”

“It’s not, but I wish it was. You know those people that were after that woman on the train?”

“Do I ever.”

“He claims to be their head guy. Says everyone is in on it. Can’t trust the police.”

“But—”

“Not even if they’re relatives,” he says, thinking of Hakuba. “It has to be us.”

“Us?”

“People you trust.”

“You believe him?”

“I don’t think he’s lying! You at least should hear me out.”

“Fine! One chance, but if I don’t like what you say, I’m turning you in!”

“Fine!” Kaito says.

“Fine!” Edogawa replies.


End file.
